Quotes & Sayings About Noticing Small Things

Noticing small changes early helps you adapt to the bigger change that are to come — Spencer Johnson

Without noticing, I slip into a light yet lingering malaise. Not a depression, more like a fascination for melancholia, which I turn in my hand as if it were a small planet, streaked in shadow, impossibly blue. — Patti Smith

But I must finally realize that I am subject to these sudden transformations. The thing is that I rarely think; a crowd of small metamorphoses accumulate in me without my noticing it, and then, one fine day, a veritable revolution takes place. — Jean-Paul Sartre

He should have caught up with me inside of fifteen minutes at the outside, if he'd been able to get on the next train after mine. But then there was that station agent to be considered. And Rafe didn't have a solitary coin on him; he'd have to break one of those fifties. I now remembered something that I'd been noticing half my life and that had never meant anything to me until today - a little sign outside each subway change booth, advising the public that the agent wasn't obliged to make change for anything bigger than $1. Never get mixed up in a murder, flashed through my mind insanely, unless you've got plenty of small change.
("Don't Wait Up For Me, Tonight") — Cornell Woolrich

I said, my phone."
I stand at the threshold and look in. The princess has her back to me, and Lor is beyond noticing anything. Ryodan and Barrons are another matter. They're too observant by far. There is also the small matter of the enormous possessiveness I feel where Barrons is concerned.
I step inside and place my palm on the interior panel.
Two males roar in unison.
"Ms. Lane, you will not close-"
"Mac, you will give me my f*ucking-"
The door hisses closed behind me. — Karen Marie Moning

I studied him the way I studied all the people in my life, noticing the changes of his mood, the times when the edge of his patience came into view, even small physical details like the sickle-shaped scar on the top of his right forearm and the small flourish he made with his hand whenever he set down a tool, as if he was brushing bad air away from it. — Roland Merullo

He entered the room, noticing three things at once. There was a fire beginning to build in the small brick fireplace on the wall to his left, the room smelt like its owner, clean and delicate and flowery, and Lauren lay stretched on the bed. Naked.
His heart slammed harder against his chest and his c#ck twitched again. At this rate, it wouldn't take long at all before he would be sliding into her. Jesus, just looking at her turned him on. Turned him on and left him at her mercy. No, that wasn't right. Left him ... absolute. Without her in his life, he'd been insubstantial. — Lexxie Couper

She folded her arms against the chill in the air, and he noticed again how little she was. Barely to his shoulders. Her chutzpah made him forget her small stature. Her chin was a pixielike triangle, and her eyes were like a shadowed forest. Deep. Mysterious. "Well. Good night," she said. What was he thinking? He cleared his throat. "Night." As he retrieved the ladder and carried it to his truck, he reminded himself of all the reasons why he shouldn't be noticing her hair or her chin and most definitely not her deep-green eyes. — Denise Hunter

It is an abstract change without object. Am I the one who has changed? ( ... ) I must finally realize that I am subject to these sudden transformations. The thing is that I rarely think; a crowd of small metamorphoses accumulate in me without my noticing it, and then, one fine day, a veritable revolution takes place. This is what has given my life such a jerky, incoherent aspect. — Jean-Paul Sartre

The most successful detectives owe their success to noticing small signs. Scouts are natural detectives and never let the smallest detail escape them. These small things are called by Scouts 'Sign.' — Robert Baden-Powell

Why should it be any surprise that people find solace in the most intimate literary genre? Poetry slows us down, cherishes small details. A large disaster erases those details. We need poetry for nourishment and for noticing, for the way language and imagery reach comfortably into experience, holding and connecting it more successfully than any news channel we could name. — Naomi Shihab Nye

It's just something the tightropers used to say," she says. "At first we thought they were mocking us - if one of got a little extra food, they'd tell us, 'someone is looking out for you,' but then we started noticing they'd say it to each other. If one of the generals' small sons fell and didn't get hurt - 'someone is looking out for you.'"
Beckan is confused. "Who's looking out for you?"
"I think someone you met once or twice who you didn't know was important," she says. "You just passed by them and had no idea they were secretly taking care of you. Maybe they don't know either. — Hannah Moskowitz

Ironically, often the thing that keeps me from experiencing joy is my preoccupation with self. The very selfishness that keeps me from pouring myself out for the joy of others also keeps me from noticing and delighting in the myriad small gifts God offers each day. This is why Walker Percy describes boredom as "the self stuffed with the self." — John Ortberg

Then I heard someone laugh.
I wished I didn't know whose laugh it was, but I knew Will's laugh just like I knew he had a small scar right above his left elbow. You couldn't be reluctantly lust-ridden for someone without noticing stuff about them. — Elizabeth Scott

Relief doesn't have to be postponed until a trial is over; it can come with a change of mind-set, a mind-set of hope, seeking, and noticing the small but significant blessings from God that witness He's there. A mind-set and realization that you're still here, you're still standing, and you are not broken. A mind-set that allows yourself to have open eyes to see past our narrow and mortal desires. Even our loneliest and hardest days are, in fact, rich with direction and guidance to move you forward, not backward, on the path God has for you to the best and most fulfilling journey. — Al Carraway

I was always decoding. I was hyperalert.
Being hyperalert is a lasting thing. Being a watcher. Noticing emotional shirts, infinitesimally small tremors that flit over another person's face, the jab in a seemingly innocuous word, the quickening in a walk, an abrupt gesture - the way, say, a jacket is tossed over a chair. — Delia Ephron

When you start noticing even a small portion of all there is to be grateful for, you'll find there is no room for lack, hurt, or want. The attitude of gratitude: the great, full feeling. — Peter McWilliams

Oh, how small we were, in the grand scheme of it all.

Our planet was but a speck in the midst of the milky way galaxy, which was a speck in the midst of the known universe. We were fighting to save it, and yet it could disappear without anyone in the nearest solar system even noticing.

Small, insignificant. Little more than ants before a giant. — Wildbow

When we stop noticing small things, we are no longer truly alive. — Neel Burton

A child dragging bent useless legs is crawling up the hill outside the village. Nose to the stones, goat dung, and muddy trickles, she pulls herself along like a broken cricket. We falter, ashamed of our strong step, and noticing this, she gazes up, clear-eyed, without resentment - it seems much worse that she is pretty. In Bengal, GS says stiffly, beggars will break their children's knees to achieve this pitiable effect for business purposes: this is his way of expressing his distress. But the child that lies here at our boots is not a beggar; she is merely a child, staring in curiosity at tall, white strangers. I long to give her something - a new life? - yet am afraid to tamper with such dignity. And so I smile as best I can, and say "Namas-te!" "Good morning!" How absurd! And her voice follows as we go away, a small clear smiling voice - "Namas-te!" - a Sanskrit word for greeting and parting that means, "I salute you". — Peter Matthiessen

She knew she had become the strange sort of lady that she remembered noticing as a child, the sort of lady who was always neat and kind, whose house was quiet because there were no children, who hosted the knitting circle and kept small treats around in case some child might be in need of a licorice whip or a shortbread cookie. — Jane Smiley

When she was older, after ten or so, she could tell she was being useful, but as a small child she was tolerated (only just, she knew) by this whirlwind of efficiency that was her mother organizing a party. Still she insisted on arranging fruit on a dish, or disposing ashtrays around the house, while her mother reduced her pace to Alice's. At least while "helping," Alice did not feel quite so much as if she were a tiny creature on top of a great wave, frantically and hopelessly signalling to her mother, who stood indifferently on the shore, not noticing her. — Doris Lessing